Cammi Balleck CTN
ANCB Board Certified Traditional Naturopath
The State of Colorado does not require licensing for traditional naturopaths, which are not the same as Naturopathic Doctors, which are required to be licensed through the State of Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies. The differences between traditional naturopaths and Naturopathic Doctors are; education, knowledge, training, capability, and ethics.
Naturopathic Doctor education includes the requirement of a bachelor's degree in order to apply to a four-year Naturopathic program at an accredited Naturopathic School, which includes clinical training and patient care. The next step, successfully passing NPLEX, Naturopathic Physicians Licensing Examinations, is a prerequisite for applying for state licensure. The granting of a state license to qualified professionals means that license holders are required to follow the laws that govern their practice.
In contrast, traditional naturopaths have no education requirements, none, not even a GED requirement. Consequently, traditional naturopaths lack the education, knowledge, training, capability, and ethics that are necessary in any health care setting.
ANCB, American Naturopathic Certification Board, the only credential listed for this individual, is not much help.
In fact, ANCB gives false certification based on false credentials. Their website says exam eligibility requires "a doctoral level degree for the exam in Traditional Naturopathy", but, "Practical experience, apprenticeships, and additional certifications are also considered..." What that means is that if a doctoral level degree is not available, any work-related experience, which does not need to be corroborated or checked, can be used to claim eligibility to take their exam. Because there are no other credentials listed for this individual it is assumed there is no doctoral level degree or any education qualifications that would allow the capability to provide some type of health care. ANCB does not indicate whether the doctoral level degree must come from an accredited source or may be accepted from non-accredited sources, like diploma mills or distance learning enterprises where degrees of any kind are handed out for little or no effort and a price.
Flimsy certification is not a good consideration for any health care issues, but that is only one consideration health care consumers should have for this listing.
This is not health care.
This particular traditional naturopath offers to test urine or saliva samples, however, traditional naturopaths are not qualified or capable to gather or test urine or saliva samples. To get around this inconvenience, urine and saliva test kits are sent directly to the client, who gathers the sample on their own, then sends it off to a lab, not a local lab or even a real lab, but an enterprise that claims to be a lab, whose sole function is to always, ALWAYS, produce test results revealing an imbalance that can be treated with the very supplements that the fake lab sells to the traditional naturopath, who then sells them to the client, with additional markup. Once a consumer has been convinced they have an imbalance that can be treated with supplements, further tests are always, yes always, recommended to determine progress and additional supplements, and it is interesting to note that optimum balance may have to be maintained indefinitely or for the rest of the client's life, with supplements, but it isn't about client's health: it is about generating income for the traditional naturopath and the fake lab. In reality, these fake labs are not medical testing facilities, and are not even brick-and-mortar enterprises, existing only in the internet, designed to create profit by the sale of supplements through an arrangement with a shady alternative health practitioner. These fake labs do no testing whatsoever. The samples are simply thrown out and phony results are processed to the client in order to shorten the time it takes to get the client to part with their money.
Hormone and Neurotransmitter Balancing and Testing?
It is irresponsible to suggest to "Find out where all your hormones are..." from saliva and urine testing. Hormone levels naturally fluctuate and are normally tested with blood samples, which means, in order to get an accurate assay, several blood tests would have to be taken over the course of a set period of time. This presents a problem for unskilled traditional naturopaths and consumers who have to collect their own samples, which is why easier-to-obtain saliva and urine samples are promoted. But, in real health care, saliva tests are generally not used to test hormone levels because the reliability can be compromised by rapid fluctuations in saliva, normal degradation, and sample collection, storage, and shipping conditions. Further, there are no published ranges of what would be considered normal hormone levels in saliva. Some hormones can be measured in urine samples, but cannot be used to determine "possible imbalance".
Neurotransmitter levels, which might be considered to be able to be tested because they are chemical messengers in the body, have their own normal actions that a saliva or urine test would be inadequate to discern and therefore would not be reliable; diffusion, degradation or deactivation, and reuptake. Furthermore, the neurotransmitter system depends on where the receptors are located, such as connecting motor nerves to muscles, or in the brain or spinal column, many are produced and activated only in the intestine, making it impossible to get an accurate and complete assay of neurotransmitter levels from saliva and urine samples.
Naturopaths are very limited in their scope of knowledge and treatments they can offer for any health issue. In the case of hormone or neurotransmitter imbalance, even if those conditions were real, the only hope naturopaths can offer is supplements, expensive supplements with no evidence they can affect hormone or neurotransmitter levels, let alone optimize them.
"...we even test food intolerances."
Remarkable, for two reasons; there are no recognized food intolerance tests available because food intolerance is a condition limited to the digestive system, the symptoms of which pass when food passes through and out of the system, and there is no physiologic reason to test food intolerance from a saliva or urine sample.
"Great for depression, anxiety, mental focus, addictions, and low energy."
This claim seems to suggest that saliva and urine testing are great for these conditions and presumably that treatment would be equally great. This is misleading and disingenuous. Depression, anxiety, and addictions are serious health issues and people who are looking for real help will not get it from unskilled and unethical traditional naturopaths, nor will people with mental focus or low energy issues, both of which can be symptoms of potentially serious conditions. Lack of education, knowledge, training, capability, or ethics results in an extremely limited scope in which a traditional naturopath is unable to properly assess a condition, properly treat it, or recommend a client to a qualified professional health care provider.
The coupon this listing directs consumers to offers a free online visit, which adds to the obviously isolating, detached experience for the consumer that consists of an online visit, saliva and urine test kits sent by mail to the consumer, samples collected by the consumer and sent to an unknown enterprise, results from the tests sent to the consumer, emails to the consumer from the traditional naturopath recommending supplements, which can also be sent through the mail, all without the consumer ever seeing someone who can so much as check blood pressure, which, by the way, is a more serious and common health concern than something conjured up like hormone and neurotransmitter imbalance.
Less than optimal health care experience
Bogus testing, fake lab, phony results, false diagnoses, illegitimate treatment, and sham practitioner, adds up to fraudulent health care.
An added note about fraud
The coupon for this listing also offers a free copy of a book authored by this individual. On the front cover of the book, the letters PhD are placed after the name, the back cover reveals the same letters plus the proclamation, "leading Happy Hormone Doctor" and "a doctorate degree in naturopathic health."
However, there is no evidence to support this individual's claim to be a doctor. There is no license for this individual with the State of Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies, either as a naturopathic doctor or a medical doctor.
In addition, there is no evidence to support this individual's claim to have obtained a PhD. A doctorate degree in naturopathic health is not offered nor recognized in the United States and there is no accreditation for that program or the colleges that offer it.
Education and degrees in the alternative health industry can be quite a bit different than traditional courses of education and degrees. For instance, there are online and distance learning enterprises, in the Unites States as well as outside the country, which, for a fee, will provide doctorate, bachelor, or master degrees for as little as a year or so of online study or distance learning, with no education pre-requisites. These types of enterprises are not accredited in the United States and, in addition to not requiring previous college experience, or even a GED, do not offer clinical training, residency, patient care training, or any other training that would be expected for careers in the health industry.
This leaves consumer's health and pocketbooks vulnerable to uneducated, unskilled, and unqualified individuals who claim fraudulent credentials.
It is worth it to take the time to verify credentials of anyone who promises any type of health care.
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